When there is an organization wide decision to move to the Cloud for computing resources, there are other decision points that may cause dilemmas. For instance, the decision makers may wonder:

Should the Cloud model adopted be a private Cloud or a hybrid Cloud model?

Let us begin with some definitions.

A Private Cloud is “private”. The infrastructure and services are maintained on a private network. Security and control is greater. But, the software and infrastructure remains a capital expenditure for the organization and the cost savings that are hyped for Cloud services does not accrue to the organization.

A Hybrid Cloud, as the name suggests, is a “mix and match” Cloud that may be partly private, partly public. The proportion of usage of the public or the private components may vary from one organization to another. The purpose is to ensure that the different aspects of your organization work within the most efficient environment possible. But, the downside is that the organization has to keep track of the different work dimensions and deployments and ensure that the parts communicate with each other efficiently and securely. This makes management of the Cloud more complex.

A close look at any organization will show that pure private Clouds are not very practical for organizations that are in the growth phase. The private Cloud cannot always provide all the different types of resources that may be required by the organization.

The hybrid Cloud with strategic access to both private and public Cloud resource pools can harness additional resources when expanding user base or popularity of an application draws heavily upon available infrastructures. Problems of latency, high availability, scalability, etc. can be addressed with the public side of the hybrid Cloud architecture. Stringent security requirements of the organization can be addressed by the private Cloud protocols and data at rest can be placed within the private Cloud infrastructure of the hybrid Cloud.

Organizations must take well-reasoned decisions on how much of their Cloud infrastructure
they want in the public domain and how much of it they want in the private domain. This will include decisions around which parts of their applications they want to move to the public Cloud or private Cloud or how quickly and how efficiently they want to service their markets or at what point they want their public and private Clouds to interact.

It is apparent, from the above discussion, that the private/public combo requires greater management control. Many hybrid solutions ease the burden of management by providing its users with an API layer that abstracts the disparate infrastructures and enables a single window interface.